Strategic Plan and Goals - Teaching & Learning
Revised 2004

Overarching Goal: To provide faculty with opportunities for professional development and to provide resources to foster an environment that supports excellence in teaching and learning.

Specific Goals:

• To support faculty with opportunities for peer support and reflection through access to a variety of developmental resources and formative assessment strategies.
• To support faculty in providing students with a variety of pedagogical experiences.
• To support faculty and student collaboration in scholarly and creative activities.
• To support faculty and students with opportunities for interdisciplinary study, at both under- graduate and graduate levels.
• To recognize and support students in their role as active and engaged learners.

CSUS reaffirms its history and identity with the centrality of teaching. The University will continue to be known for graduating students who have the knowledge and skills to assume productive roles in society. However, our students require more than a finite set of knowledge and skills. A high quality university education must foster a desire to pursue knowledge, develop tools for intellectual inquiry, and nurture commitment to learning as a serious, lifelong endeavor. To achieve these ends we will recognize outstanding accomplishments in teaching and learning.

The University must provide opportunities, including professional development and other means, for all faculty to enhance their teaching. These efforts should be guided by research on university student learning, increasing our use of methods that have a clear, positive effect on short and long-term learning. These include emphasizing how knowledge in different courses and disciplines is related, requiring both individual and group efforts, and teaching students how to organize information and approach complex academic tasks. In addition, our students' differences in learning styles and language proficiency demand material presented in a variety of ways and student evaluation by a variety of means. Finally, faculty should help students relate class content to their personal and out of classroom experiences and the world around them, making our region a learning laboratory for students and faculty and a rich resource for the University.

These characteristics of effective instruction are consistent across disciplines though teaching strategies and styles vary. Faculty, therefore, have an unparalleled opportunity for learning skills of teaching from one another. We should support and recognize faculty efforts to share their skills with colleagues. Furthermore, while summative assessment is required by the MOU and used in the retention, tenure and promotion process, faculty should be given the opportunity to utilize "formative assessment" to complement, enhance, and improve their teaching and consequently student learning. Developmental resources, such as the Center for Teaching and Learning, faculty learning communities, formal and informal faculty colloquia exist to encourage faculty to share innovative and experimental teaching techniques with colleagues that fosters peer discussions concerning teaching and learning.

We must educate increasing numbers of faculty about the potential of different teaching techniques so that they can employ appropriate methods for enhancing student learning. These may include traditional methods such as lecturing but also other techniques such as active learning, student centered learning, cooperative learning, technology based learning, faculty/student research, service learning, etc.

We will encourage faculty to involve students in the faculty member's intellectual and creative work. Faculty scholarship and professional service must be viewed as essential complements to effective teaching. When students learn about their professors' research and service, they are learning how knowledge is advanced and how concerns of society are addressed. When faculty engage in scholarship and professional service, they maintain the currency and intellectual vitality necessary to teach effectively in a rapidly changing society.

We must recognize that an excellent education requires students to integrate knowledge across courses and disciplines. The challenges confronting our world cannot be understood from single disciplinary perspectives. Employers are seeking graduates who can work productively in teams that bring together varied expertise. We Approved by the Council for University Planning May 7, 2004 need to encourage and facilitate collaboration in teaching so that faculty can model collaborative intellectual work and involve students in the process.

Finally, effective education involves the active participation of both faculty and students. Students must actively engage in the learning process to acquire knowledge and skills, develop the ability to think critically, enhance the ability to communicate, and attain in-depth knowledge of a discipline or profession. The University should recognize whenever possible excellence in student learning and also encourage learning as a life- long pursuit.

Approved by the Council for University Planning May 7, 2004